Conventional parking meters are widely used to control vehicular parking and to encourage maximum turnover of limited parking areas. These parking meters also provide a substantial source of income to the municipality or other organization using such meters. Drawbacks to these meters include high initial investment costs, high maintenance costs, and high collection costs, all complicated by vandalism and pilferage. The user also encounters various drawbacks when using conventional parking meters. Does the user have coins for the meter?. Is the time ordered by inserting coins sufficient to cover the time the user is away from the vehicle?. Upon return to the vehicle, the remaining time on the meter cannot be reclaimed. No receipt or record of the parking expense is available.
Alternatively, a number of municipalities have adopted the use of parking coupons. The coupons have tear out sections which indiciate the date and the expiration time of a particular parking period, the coupons being displayed from the inside of the vehicle by wedging the coupon into the upper end of a closed window. However, these coupons have not been found entirely satisfactory in many locations because of illegally tampering with them for more than one use. Additionally, dividing the city into many parking zones, with each zone requiring a specific coupon, is impractical. Further, there is no incentive to minimize the duration a vehicle occupies the parking location, that is, such a system does not provide "real time parking" capability.
Applicant, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,717,815, has described a time metering device that is useful as a prepaid parking card. The device is a unitary electronic card purchased in advance by the user to provide a pre-purchased time period that may be used as and when desired by the user for parking his vehicle. The card has buttons to select the type of parking zone required, a timer clock showing the amount of purchased time remaining on the card, and switches to start and stop the timer clock. Thus, the user pays for only the actual time that a vehicle occupies a parking space. The card device is displayed within the vehicle during the time the vehicle occupies the parking location. Various other features of the parking card are also disclosed. However, it is desirable to provide a parking monitoring and fee assessment system that requires no special devices by the user. To this end, applicant has devised a unique method of monitoring and assessing a fee for parking a vehicle in a toll parking location. The method further provides means for detecting that a parked vehicle is in violation of the requirements for the toll parking location.